A sheet feeding device disclosed in related-art includes a sheet feeding tray, a sheet feeding roller, a moving unit, and a separation roller. The sheet feeding tray has a placing portion on which sheets are placed. The sheet feeding roller is disposed at a position facing the placing portion. The sheet feeding roller comes into contact with the sheet placed on the placing portion to convey the sheet. The moving unit moves the sheet placed on the placing portion toward the sheet feeding roller. The separation roller is disposed at a downstream side than the sheet feeding roller in a sheet conveying direction. The separation roller conveys the sheet conveyed by the sheet feeding roller in a state in which the sheet is nipped between the separation roller and the sheet feeding roller while being brought into sliding contact with a separation pad.
According to the related-art sheet feeding device, in a case where a plurality of sheets are placed on the placing portion of the sheet feeding tray, the sheets are moved toward the sheet feeding roller by the moving unit, and the uppermost sheet on the placing portion is brought into contact with the sheet feeding roller. In this way, one sheet or a plurality of sheets are conveyed toward the downstream side in the sheet conveying direction by the sheet feeding roller. Then, the one sheet or plurality of sheets are nipped between the separation roller and the separation pad, and are conveyed further to the downstream side, for example, an image forming unit. In this instance, a sheet conveying resistance is applied to each sheet due to the sliding contact with the separation pad. This causes the plurality of sheets to be separated one by one.